JUNE PHOTOS

Michel De Groot’s powerful images transport you to a reality true, an ongoing truth too real to many, the world’s eyes closed tightly from feeling. Freedom taken, the every day other side of life.

The five shown are from refugee camps following those fleeing from their own land, militia’s might forcibly ruling, while another is inside an AIDS hospice where care at life’s end is given, scientific light burning with the hope one day an answer can be found.

Displaced to fear, native neighbour their shoulder to shelter. Souls richer sorrow deep, the violent might of a blind regime. Running to survive, the devastation of assaults unsconsciable. Life stolen, the next day never known.

Woman and child as one, heartbreaking tears of fear and mourning, cold to the sun, hard now to soften. Eyes young to distress mistrusting their own, each day a new survival. Clutching close hearts beating the pain inside breathing, existing from one to the next. The child’s life being all.

Innocent eyes see through another being, a beginning. Wounded hearts’ mute feeling, trusting all and none, injured souls burning deep into our own. A determination of living defying hate, breathing life into all.

Elsewhere those learning are shown. Disease ravaged, incurable by hope, cared and comforted in finality. Fight that unstoppable in time by prevention, studented basically, no answer yet in sight. See yourself in another light watching your own self exhibited to fear.

In camp provisions procured, to their own women and children run and gather. A pot here and there, to another a chair, water the life all live on. Beginning unplanned, war’s fate dictating days, fear natural as breathing.

Surrounded by others a soul alone, defiant against fear paining sorrow, the scar deep in all. Shelter scant solace but all, control not their own, dread the new every day breathing. True soul strikes fear to misgiving, hoping another never feels what she feels.

Stoic to the fall, standing tall against and for all.

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Your words here are exactly what I felt when viewing that photograph Michael:
<strong>"Elsewhere those learning are shown. Disease ravaged, incurable by hope, cared and comforted in finality. Fight that unstoppable in time by prevention, studented basically, no answer yet in sight. See yourself in another light watching your own self exhibited to fear."</strong>
It is no small thing to encapsulate so many complex feelings related to mortality and suffering in one finite space but you have done it superbly and the photographs are the work of a photographer who is an emotional alchemist with a huge heart. Thank you Michel De Groot for sharing your photos with us and thank you Michael Organ for such a poetic and tasteful introduction to some heavy duty subject matter.